


Secrets

by performativezippers



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Maggie doens't know Alex is DEO, Secret Identities, Sisters, au-ish, everyone is oblivious, hugs for alex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 22:12:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9789308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/performativezippers/pseuds/performativezippers
Summary: There’s a lot of a hubbub about Kara’s secret identity, but in the deepest, darkest parts of herself, Alex has always thought that—even though she’s actually from this planet, and doesn’t need special glasses to keep from accidentally incinerating things with her eyeballs—her own secret identities may be the bigger burden.AKA, the one where nobody knows anything.AU-ish, oneshot.





	

There’s a lot of a hubbub about Kara’s secret identity, but in the deepest, darkest parts of herself, Alex has always thought that—even though she’s actually from this planet, and doesn’t need special glasses to keep from accidentally incinerating things with her eyeballs—her own secret identities may be the bigger burden.

Kara’s always had Alex. Kara has never kept a secret from Alex. From day one on Earth, Alex knew who and what Kara was and what she could do. Alex was the one Kara had turned to as she adjusted to her life on Earth and to her new powers. Alex was the one who spent a month in a back brace after Kara hugged her too hard and nearly cracked a vertebra. Alex was the one who covered it up when Kara broke the arm of a boy who’d challenged her to an arm wrestling contest in high school – offering to drive him home and purposefully crashing her mom’s car so to give an excuse for his injury. (Kara is the one who snuck her potstickers through the window during the entire two months she was grounded).

Kara’s secret was something that they shared, the two of them. And it burned in Alex’s mouth sometimes, when Kara would whine that she’d never have a normal life, and her mother would wax eloquent about how Kara’s differences made her so special. And Alex would want to scream _what about ME_ because how was she supposed to have a normal life? Would Kara’s differences make her special too, or just alone?

And when Kara first revealed her powers, Alex was only a couple feet away, gaping through buckling fuselage and safety glass. Kara has never, even for a moment, had to do any of this without Alex. Without her knowledge, without her support, without her help. Kara, for all that she’s an orphan, an alien, and the last of her kind, has never been alone. She’s never felt anything that she didn’t share with Alex.

This is Kara’s secret. These are Kara’s powers. This is Kara’s life. But no one’s ever mentioned that Alex, too, has always been living a lie.

Alex had always kept secrets from Kara. What the other kids said about her when she first started school and didn’t have a good grasp of social norms yet. What gross boys said about her after she went through (an upsettingly graceful and easy) puberty. Alex never told Kara about the burden she felt – making sure that Kara was safe and secret and happy was a full-time job. Alex kept her resentment a secret, and kept her anger at her mother deep inside herself. She shared only a fragment of her grief for her father, worried that Kara—who had lost father, mother, and entire planet—was suffering worse than she was.

So when Hank recruited Alex for the DEO and she couldn’t tell Kara, she didn’t think it would be hard. Secrets were her entire life.

But it’s harder than she thought it would be.

* * *

 

She starts thinking of her life like a double-ended blade. She can’t be honest at work about her family, and she can’t be honest with her family about her work. There is no one in the world, she thinks, who knows all of the things she knows to be true. There is a DEO, she is a top secret agent there, and her job is to hunt, track, and capture aliens on earth; her little sister Kara is an alien with secret super powers.

She’s terrified of the DEO finding out about Kara – they know about her pod, of course, they know Kara Zor-El from Krypton arrived all those years ago – but she’s terrified of them finding out that person is also her baby sister Kara Danvers. She’s constantly watching not just her words and her actions but anything that could reveal, to even a janitor at the DEO, that she knows more about aliens than she lets on.

It’s exhausting, and it’s not even half of it.

The lies to her mother come easily, but they start sticking like chalk in her mouth when she talks to Kara. Every time her phone chings, and she has to go, and Kara looks up at her with those puppy eyes, and says “Another problem at the lab?” and Alex mutters something about incompetent post-docs fucking everything up again, she feels like she is losing another piece of herself.

Kara loves her so fully, and trusts her so completely, and is so open to her. She wishes that she could lean on Kara like that. She wishes that her love weren’t tainted by secrets and lies. She wishes that when she bails on sister night Kara could, just once, know it’s because she’s stalking an alien down a dark ally in black uniform with four different weapons strapped to herself, not because someone put a drop of the wrong something into the wrong petri dish.

She wishes, selfishly, that she could tell someone, anyone, when she does something brilliant at work, something no one else even imagined could be possible. She wishes Kara could congratulate her when she catches an alien, and console her with ice cream and potstickers when she doesn’t. She once tried to lie about the details but still get the point across, but Kara—sweet, wonderful Kara—asked so many follow-up questions, excited to get even this brief glimpse into Alex’s life, that Alex never did it again.

It hurts because she knows that Kara still looks up to her. That Kara still wants to know everything about her, just like when she was young and would ask question after question about Alex’s friends, and life, and boyfriends, and feelings. She felt about Alex the way many girls feel about their older sisters, and then some. Alex was older, more experienced, more human. Kara still wants to know everything about her, craves her attention and her approval with the desperation only younger siblings have.

And Alex wants so badly to give it to her.

She considers quitting once when when she shows back up to Kara’s apartment after getting called away, and sees her baby sister curled up on the couch, fast asleep, clutching the stuffed animal to her chest that Alex had given her the first night she came to earth. It’s a scraggly old elephant that had been Alex’s special animal when she was very young, and Kara used to love it because she could hug it as hard as she wanted without hurting it. And because it had been Alex’s, and because Alex gave it to her, and that must mean that Alex loves her almost as much as she loves Alex. Now he only comes out when she misses her sister and wants to remind herself that Alex still loves her. It hurts Alex, physically hurts her, to know that her abrupt departure made Kara feel so small and alone and young that she needed to go get him off the secret shelf she has to levitate to reach. Alex sits down next to Kara, strokes her hair, and softly sings the one Kryptonian lullaby she knows.

The next day she tries to resign, telling Hank that keeping this job from her family is too hard. He looks her straight in the eye and asks how she’ll feel if a rogue alien kills her family, and everyone else in National City, because she wasn’t there to stop him. She’s a great agent, he tells her, and this job fills holes inside herself she hadn’t realized were there until she’d strapped on her first thigh holster.

And it’s a low blow, but she knows he’s right.

So she stays. And she lies, and she hides, and she waits, and she wishes.

* * *

 

When Kara reveals herself, Alex is relieved. She’s also terrified, of course. Terrified that people are going to find out her real identity, that the DEO is going to target her, that Alex herself is going to be asked to arrest and imprison her own sister. That other aliens from Fort Rozz will come after her. That she’ll be hurt, or killed. That she won’t need Alex anymore.

But she’s relieved. And not just because Kara saved her life, somehow landing that plane with only her own muscles and screams.

Somehow, Hank knows, from the first moment, that this woman who saved the plane is Kara Danvers. Alex tries to deny it, halfheartedly, but he looks her directly in the eye and asks if she really thinks he doesn’t know what the siblings, parents, spouses, and vague childhood friends of each and every one of his agents look like?

And she hates when he goes to capture Kara – she begs him to just go to her apartment and _talk_ to her – but she’s glad because it means Kara can finally know.

She especially hates him for how he reveals her secret – _I believe you already know Agent Danvers_ – like the fact that she’s been lying to Kara, through her teeth, for years isn’t going to bury the both of them in resentment and anger.

And it does, for about a minute, until Kara comes around. Apparently all Alex has to do is jump out of a helicopter, shake her hair out from under her helmet like she’s on Baywatch, and then apply a few quick stitches before Kara is her sweet sister again.

And she and Kara fight against Hank and, after a surprisingly short amount of time—and only one quick threat of quitting—he’s stopped threatening to lock her up, and they’re actually on the same team.

Alex and Kara, fighting side by side, no secrets from each other. And she can finally tell Kara all about her life, and Kara is there for her when she succeeds and when she fails. She can finally love Kara, purely and honestly and openly.

It feels better than Alex could ever imagine.

* * *

Alex tells Eliza about her secret life at Thanksgiving, and Eliza is pissed but it doesn’t matter because, for one beautiful second, she has no more secrets.

Then, of course, because nothing is simple, just a few moments later Alex learns that Hank is keeping a secret about her father. She goes back to her double life, slipping easily back into her secretive habits, but they chafe against her now.

And then Hank reveals his own secret to her, and now she’s back to lying to Kara about who and what he really is, and about her father, and she chafes even more.

But then Hank reveals himself to the world as J’onn, and Alex finally enjoys a few blissful months without any secrets. Hank knows about Kara, Kara knows about Hank, Eliza and Kara know about the DEO, and Alex feels like she can finally relax.

She feels her throat unclog, like she’s had a little bit of sawdust in every glass of water she’s ever had since she was 14, and now her glass is finally pure.

She can breathe. She can swallow. She feels lighter than she ever has.

And then she meets Maggie.

* * *

Alex is late for a public lecture downtown, touted as being one of the best biology lectures of the year. It’s crowded and Alex slips in just as the lecture is beginning, cursing Winn for babbling on for so long that she’d left the DEO ten minutes later than she’d meant to. She loves to be on time.

She’s just resigned herself to standing along the back wall for the full hour and half, taking notes awkwardly on a notepad balanced on nothing, when someone makes a loud “psst” sound. She turns her head and sees a truly gorgeous woman in the second-to-last row motioning her over. The woman is sitting in an aisle seat but slips over into the empty seat to her right, gesturing for Alex to take the other. The chair is still warm from her body when Alex gratefully sinks into it, trying awkwardly to take off her bag, hold her notebook, and balance her motorcycle helmet without making a commotion.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

“Yeah, no problem,” the women whispers back. “I think I got stood up, so.” She gives a little lopsided grin and Alex feels her entire body notice the woman’s dimple.

Alex shakes her head. “Their loss.” She means because of the lecture, but the woman gives her a _look_ that seems like maybe she’s taken it another way.

It’s about twenty minutes into the lecture, and Alex is deathly bored. She’s actually hoping a dangerous alien will bust in so she can have something to shoot. The man giving the talk seems to think he’s brilliant, but he could honestly have been reading one of Alex’s high school biology papers. Granted, her high school papers had been at roughly an undergraduate thesis level, but still. This is mind-numbing.

He says something particularly moronic, but in a tone of voice like he’s the second coming of Einstein, and Alex puts all her mental energy into not snapping her pen in half and running up the aisle to stab him with it. Without even noticing she’s doing it, she flips her pen around and writes on the corner of her notepad, hard: _DUH_.

Less than five seconds later, she jolts as a small hand pops into her line of vision. She watches, agape, as the woman next to her writes, in a scratchy masculine hand, _is it just me or is this guy a total idiot?_

The woman doesn’t look over at her, keeping her gaze forward. Alex follows her lead, writing while pretending to pay attention. _It’s not just you_.

She darts her eyes sideways to see the woman bite her cheek before writing back. _Mediocre white men who think they’re exceptional are kinda my pet peeve._

Alex snorts. Really, genuinely, out-loud snorts in a quiet lecture hall. Heads turn, and she gets a very sharp elbow in the ribs from her co-conspirator.

Alex is saved from having to say something back by the return of the woman’s pen. _What kind of bike do you have?_

Alex grins. This, she could talk about forever.

They write notes for the rest of the lecture. Alex learns that the woman’s name is Maggie, she has a sweet motorcycle herself, she’s a detective in NCPD’s science division (which explains why she’s here) and that she grew up in Nebraska. Swallowing down how much she hates reviving the lie, Alex tells Maggie her typical fake identity – that she’s a bench biologist at a big lab downtown. It chafes.

With about ten minutes left, Maggie writes _WE HAVE BEEN HERE FOREVER_. They’re on their fourth sheet of paper.

_Purgatory might be shorter_ , Alex agrees.

_Do you have to go back to work after this? Cause I don’t and I don’t know about you but I’m going to die if I don’t put a beer in my body immediately._

Alex manages to hold in her snort this time. _First round on me?_

* * *

They’ve seen each other pretty regularly since. Drinks here, coffee there. Alex doesn’t quite know what it is about Maggie, but she craves time with her. The chalky feeling returns, rising up in her throat every time Maggie asks about the lab, or how her day was, or even just looks at her with those eyes or smiles at her with those dimples. Alex aches to tell her, but she’s a model agent and very aware of the dangers of telling someone in law enforcement that the DEO even exists, not to mention the rest of it, so she tries to ignore it.

And then one day, right after Maggie gets dumped by the woman who stood her up at the lecture, Alex must come on too strong—something desperate and moronic about pinball bars and tapas and celebrating singledom and being company for each other—because Maggie tips her head to the side, gives her a measuring look, and says “I didn’t know you were into girls.” Alex stammers something and runs away, and everything quickly starts to make sense.

She’s into girls. She has always been into girls. And now she’s into Maggie.

This was a secret she’d been keeping from _herself_ , her entire life. This is the one secret that predates Kara and aliens and super powers. This is something she’s kept from herself, the knowledge bolted down somewhere inside of her, locked away, that now comes flooding out of her. All of her memories come, fast and hurried, proving to herself that this has always been true. That she’s always been into girls.

Alex feels lighter than she ever has in her life. She had thought she was weighed down by Kara’s secrets, by the DEO, by Hank’s identity, but this had been pulling at all of them, dragging them down deeper inside of herself, heavier and heavier, for her whole life. This is what must have given her the thin skin that chafes so easily against the other lies. This has been scratching at her throat for years. This has been weighing her down forever, and now that she’s looked it in the eye and seen herself for who she’s always been, she’s impossibly light. She wonders if maybe she’s Kryptonian too, because she’s pretty sure she can fly.

Completely sick of secrets, Alex tells everyone as quickly as she can. First Maggie, barely a moment after running away from her on the street. Then Kara, almost immediately after. And then back to Maggie, to tell her that she’s beautiful and strong and wonderful, and that Alex isn’t just gay but that she’s gay for Maggie. And all her secrets are out.

And then Maggie pulls away and completely hammers her heart into tiny stupid pieces, and she spends the night crying on Kara, because even though she tried to keep this heartbreak a secret, it spilled right out of her.

And Maggie still doesn’t know she’s DEO, but Maggie still wants to be her friend, so she meets her for pool and for drinks and for coffee. And Maggie thinks she knows all of the secrets, thinks that she knows the inner Alex, thinks that she can see right through her. She knows – she knew before literally anyone – that Alex was gay and was into her, and she thinks that’s all there is to know.

And Alex considers not seeing her anymore, because she’s forgotten how weary it made her to lie to Kara and she’s feeling that same weariness again.

She wonders, sometimes, in her darkest moments, if she loves Maggie. Why else would her burgers and beers turn to chalk in her mouth and scrape her raw all the way down if this didn’t matter in some powerfully significant way?

She thinks about breaking off this friendship, and isolating herself in the growing group of people who know about her double life. The people who find the image of her working, day in and day out, in an enclosed lab without shooting even one alien, preposterous.

And she tells her mother that she’s gay, and her mom knows it’s about Maggie because apparently Alex has lost every ability she’s ever had to keep secrets, and that means Maggie is the only person she cares about in her life who she’s keeping a secret from.

Whenever she’s with Maggie, the burden of not telling her the huge secret means that all the others just come pouring out of her mouth. She finds herself soliloquizing about her insecurities, her gayest memories, her relationship with her mother, all of her deepest fears and feelings. It’s as if she only has so much capacity for secrets inside of her anymore, and keeping this one from Maggie is taking it all up. She used to feel like she could keep an infinite amount – like her entire body was simply for the purpose of storing secrets. Hers, Kara’s, Hank’s, her mother’s, her father’s, Clark’s, now James and Winn’s. But as each of those secrets has come out, all of their spaces were filled with love and friendship and partnership. And now this one last secret is over capacity and it’s dragging her down and she can’t fit anything else inside of herself.

And so if Maggie keeps being there, right next to her, Alex is going to do something stupid. She’s going to kiss her again, or cry when she starts dating, or tell her that she might love her and that it’s killing her to not be able to have her in that way.

So tonight Alex is going to break it off with her. She’s going to tell Maggie something that’s almost the truth, to save herself from choking to death on the chalk that’s filling her up, from being rubbed raw by this secret and bleeding to death on the street. To save Kara from a slip-up that would ruin everything.

Maggie walks into the bar and she isn’t wearing anything exceptional, just her usual leather jacket and jeans, but she’s still so stunning. Alex watches as she stops a couple of steps inside the door and looks around for her. Alex raises a hand in greeting, and the dimpled smile she gets, one that just beams out of Maggie’s eyes, takes her breath away. Alex is so distracted by Maggie—how close she is leaning on her elbows over the small table, perched just on the edge of her chair to be better able to hear Alex—that she forgets to break up ( _as friends_ ) with her for the first twenty minutes.

And just as she’s about to do it, just as she’s opening her mouth to do it, she sees something that freezes her blood in her veins. Of course. Of course, the alien they’ve been tracking for the last week, the alien who can make a sound that instantly drops everyone around him, _including Kara_ , into a coma has just walked into this bar. Of course.

Alex sends a quick text to Hank from under the table and then, trying to act both quickly and casually, turns to look Maggie right in the eye, and says, “You have to leave. Now.”

Maggie’s eyebrows shoot up, and she gives Alex a surprised look that somehow still shows off her dimples. (Alex hates herself for noticing right now because they all might die, but, god she’s so beautiful). “I have to do what, now?” Her smile gets bigger and Alex can barely breathe under all these secrets.

Alex knows there isn’t a great chance this is going to work, but she has to try. “Leave. Now. Just stand up and go.” Maggie can’t be here when this goes down. She can’t be in that kind of danger. She can’t see Alex in that kind of danger. She can’t see what Alex is going to do about it.

Maggie drops the smile. She leans in, grabbing Alex’s hand under the table. Her face is serious and concerned. “Alex, what’s going on?”

Alex chokes on her words (Maggie is _holding her hand_ ), and a secret slips out. “You have to go before he sees us.”

Maggie instantly slides into protective cop mode. “Alex…Alex, look at me.” Alex does, and it’s a huge mistake. Those eyes. Looking at her like they sometimes do, like they care so much about her. “Whoever is here, I’ll protect you, okay, I swear. I promise, I would never let anyone hurt you.”

And it feels so good, like maybe in different bar on a different night Maggie might love her back, but it chafes because Alex can’t say it back. And it chafes because if Maggie doesn’t leave this very moment she’s likely to be killed in the crossfire and Alex is pretty sure she’d die herself if that happened.

“Maggie, please.” Alex isn’t above begging, if it keeps Maggie safe. She learned puppy eyes from Kara and she likes to think she’s pretty good at them. “I need you to trust me right now, and leave. Just get on your bike and go home and I’ll call you later and explain, okay?”

She’s talking as fast as she can, but Maggie is just shaking her head, refusing to leave, and Alex can’t blame her because fuck if she’d consider leaving Maggie if the situation were reversed.

But before she can say anything else, several loud crashes fill the room, and Alex knows the DEO has just broken down all the doors. She stands quickly and is in the middle of wondering how the hell they got here so fast when she sees them pouring into the bar, almost a dozen of them in their slick black.

“DANVERS,” the nearest one calls.

Without thinking, Alex reaches over with one hand and pulls hard on the edge of Maggie’s chair, dumping her gracelessly onto the ground, while her other hand rises into the air and neatly catches the gigantic specialized gun that’s just been tossed her direction.

Without a second of hesitation, she shifts the gun into a shooting stance, pumps it to prime it’s ammunition and, with an exhale, fires three rounds directly into the throat of the alien, who was just starting to head for an exit.

His primary weapon disabled, the rest of it is pretty simple. Confident that her agents will have her back, Alex tosses the now useless weapon to the side and charges at him. In less than a minute she stabs his arm that tries to grab her with the tactical knife she always straps to her ankle, and knocks him out cold with a hard roundhouse kick to the head.

He drops to the ground and is instantly swarmed by agents. Alex takes a deep breath. That went better than she’d ever imagined. Except for just one small problem.

Maggie is standing behind their table, which Alex must have flipped at some point in the very short fight, eyes wider than Alex has ever seen them.

Before Alex can take more than two steps toward her, Supergirl arrives, instantly taking in the scene and landing quickly next to Alex. “Alex! Are you okay? Oh my gosh, you’re bleeding!”

Alex looks down at her arm, which it turns out is covered in a dark purple blood, then back up at Supergirl. “His blood isn’t toxic, is it?”

Supergirl shakes her head quickly. “No, no, it’s not. I just…I just thought it was yours for a second.”

Alex knows Kara is just scared for her. “What, so you have x-ray vision but can’t tell goopy alien blood from human blood?”

Kara grins, knowing what Alex is doing, and loving her for it. “It’s dark in here!”

“It’s purple.” Alex says, trying not to laugh. The fight was short but she’s still got a ton of adrenaline coursing through her, making everything seem funnier.

Supergirl rolls her eyes. “Whatever.” She looks over Alex’s shoulder at the alien, still down on the floor. “Time for cleanup?”

“Uh,” Alex scratches her ear and looks pointedly over to Maggie, who has made her way closer and seems to be holding her breath.

Kara follows her gaze, and physically jolts as she sees Maggie. “Oh! OH. Oh my. Uh…oh. Right. Well, I’ll just…uh,” Kara awkwardly gestures toward the alien, dorkily hooking her thumb over her shoulder, “go…over, there, I guess. Uh, bye!”

“What—what the _hell_ , Alex?” Maggie is still sort of shell shocked—this was her first time face to face with Supergirl, on top of everything else—but she’s got nothing on Alex.

Alex tries to take a step towards her but feels like her legs are suddenly jelly. “Maggie,” she says a little weakly, “I can explain.”

“You’re DEO.”

Alex’s jaw drops. “What!” She cries in a voice that, unfortunately, squeaks. “I am not…what even is…uh.”

But she trails off because Vasquez is suddenly next to her, handing her something to wipe off the blood that’s started to congeal on her arm. “Great job, Agent Danvers!” _Well, shit_ , Alex thinks. But Vasquez isn’t done yet. “You took him down with zero injuries to our team or to any bystanders, and in like, six seconds. That’s got to be a record, even for you.” Alex can’t help herself, and she shoots a guilty little look over to Maggie, who just raises an eyebrow in a silent challenge, arms crossed over her chest. “You ready to ride back with us for debrief?”

“What?” Alex swings her eyes back to Vasquez. “Oh, right. Um, yeah. I’ll be right there.”

Vasquez nods and walks back toward where Supergirl is lifting the alien with one hand while waving adorably to the slack jawed bar patrons.

“You’re DEO.”

Alex takes the final step toward Maggie. “Look, I have to go and report. I fired a weapon so there’s, like, a whole thing. But the second I’m done, I’ll come over and we can talk, okay? Just please…don’t say anything to anyone about this until we do, okay?” Alex has to stop herself from reaching out and taking Maggie’s hand, or smoothing down the hairs that must have been mussed when she’d thrown Maggie to the floor.

Maggie gives her a long, measuring look before finally nodding. “If you bail on me, I’ll put your picture up on a billboard that says DEO in huge letters.”

Alex can’t help but grin at her. She feels so much lighter. She swallows, and her throat feels clear for the first time in so long.

“Deal.”

* * *

Debrief doesn’t take too long, so Alex is standing outside Maggie’s door before she’s quite ready to be. She’s washed all the blood off her arm, but it seems to have stained her forearm faintly purple. Hank assures her it isn’t permanent, but she’ll be running some tests herself first thing tomorrow.

Feeling much more afraid now than she had at any moment with the alien, Alex spends a good two minutes psyching herself up to knock on the door. Maybe having Hank bluntly tell Kara hadn’t been so bad, she thinks. At least she hadn’t had to do it herself.

But she is tired of keeping secrets and hiding herself behind doors and under lab goggles, so she makes a fist and she knocks.

Maggie pulls the door open, and, before she can say anything, Alex holds out her right hand. “Agent Alex Danvers,” she says formally. “DEO.”

* * *

Maggie invites her in and offers her a beer, and maybe it’s that her throat isn’t full of chalk anymore, maybe it’s because she has absolutely nothing weighing her down, maybe it’s because Maggie has changed into sweatpants and she looks so domestic and beautiful, but it’s the best beer Alex has ever had. And she explains everything (except for the whole, Supergirl is my sister, thing) and she tells Maggie that she’d wanted to tell her every day, that it had killed her to lie, and Maggie actually understands.

She tells Alex that she gets it, that Alex was just protecting herself and their city, and that she doesn’t blame Alex for lying.

And Alex knows in that moment that she loves her.

Maggie lets Alex fuss over her and apologize about four times for throwing her to the floor of the bar like that before Maggie holds up a hand to stop her. “You were just trying to protect me,” Maggie says softly.

Alex can’t help but repeat Maggie’s words from earlier back to her, just as softly. “I would never let anything happen to you, Maggie, I swear.”

“No,” Maggie says, but she’s agreeing. “No, I know that.”

She tucks a strand of hair back, and then looks right into Alex’s eyes. She gives that smile, the one that just completely melts Alex, and it fills up the place that used to hold this heavy secret.

“I think I love you for that,” Maggie says, but Alex is so distracted by her dimples and her smile and her eyes and her bare toes that are painted a sweet light blue, that she makes Maggie say it three more times before it sinks in.

And then Maggie kisses her and it feels like Alex has just shed her entire exoskeleton, and she had no idea how good and sweet the air could feel against herself.

And she casts the last of her secret identities to the floor, and she touches Maggie’s hair softly before she kisses Maggie again and says it back, and she knows that the only things in her whole body are true, and honest, and open.

She knows that she is Alex Danvers, sister to an alien, secret agent for a secret organization, gay as hell, and totally in love with Maggie Sawyer.

And everyone else knows it too.

Well, except for the whole, Kara is Supergirl thing. But that can wait.

That’s Kara’s secret. Alex has set all of hers free.


End file.
